New York-based theater and film artist Shidan Majidi is no stranger to stage musicals, having worked as associate director for the touring revival of “Miss Saigon,” and been part of legendary British producer Cameron Mackintosh’s team for hits like “Cats” and “Phantom of the Opera,” and the film adaptation of “Les Miserables.”

So when U-M dental school faculty member Shahrzad Maghsoudloo Mirafzali reached out to Majidi in April 2017 – the two knew each other from earlier days, when Mirafzali had lived in New York, too – to see if he might be able to help create a new stage show to celebrate U-M’s bicentennial, as well as U-M’s Baha’i Club’s bicentennial, in October, Majidi had said, “There’s no way. That’s only five or six months away, and something like that would take at least a couple of years.”

But Majidi just couldn’t shake the idea of doing a project focused on celebrating difference. “I started obsessing about doing something artistically to give a voice to the state of the world that we live in.” READ THE REST HERE